On Yoichi's Heroism Part 2
A while back I made a post about Yoichi's heroism and after reading some resposnes I started thinking more. I disagree with a lot of the criticism about my post and I decided that instead of addressing individual replies I will write about my opinions on certain counterarguments to my previous post. You can read part 1 here https://www.tumblr.com/medusasea/759701821204905984/on-yoichis-heroism?source=share.
One common criticism about my previous post is that Yoichi is not supposed to be physical strong, but one with a strong will, that his strong will saved certain characters and helped them move on. I must admit that I was not entirely fair on Yoichi with this, his will did do good for other characters, even if just at the moment, but this brings up other issues I will address. One of them is the general way the OFA users dealt with Tomura. The most apparent problem is Gearshift's plan to give Tomura quirks. I would write an entire rant about this, but The youtube channel did it way better than I could ever do it, so here's a link to their rant on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSWe1EWwObk. Mind you, that Yoichi himself fully agreed with this plan.There is also the whole saving Tomura by killing him plot. Granted, the world is safer now with Tomura dead and it was understandable of him to kill his master, but the narrative wants to present his death as his rescue. Yoichi himself might've not stated this, but he certainly played a role in Tomura's death, so he helped the narrative reach this conclusion, regardless if he himself believed it or not. Yes, Yoichi helped OFA users, but the general way they all approached Tomura and AFO was extremely flawed.
Now I will further elaborate on Yoichi's lack of physical strength. I never claimed he had to have physical strength to be a hero. There are all kinds of heroes. I understand the narrative portrays him as more psychologically strong than physically. I understand the narrative portrays him as an idealist that inspires others. My problem was his faulty philosophy and the lack of vital information he gives. Sure, AFO needed to be stopped and Yoichi was right to not join his brother, but his philosophy pretty much starts and ends with "Villains hurt people for selfish reasons and they will always lose at the end.". Keyword "pretty much", since I am aware that he felt sympathy for his brother and tried to redeem him, despite the latter being evil, and he did agree with Deku's determination to save Tomura. The problem is that the definitions of good and evil are highly subjective and it's almost never as simple as someone harming others for selfish reasons. There are various reasons why people have specific moral codes and regardless of what your moral ideals are, people who are villains according to your definitions will often get away scot free. While the narrative did show nuance, there was never any confirmation he learned that bad people do not always lose in the end. Considering that Yoichi witnessed both AFO and Tomura dying at the end it is even possible that his belief about villains always losing got reinforced instead of shattered.
Moving on to Yoichi not addressing discrimination and corruption. Some counterarguments claim that he never witnessed discrimination while he was alive and that it is not his duty to address this topic. First of all, while he lived people were discriminated for having quirks and he knew it. He might've not been discriminated against himself, but considering how empathetic he is, there is no reason for him to not want quirk discrimination to stop. Second of all, he certainly witnessed plenty of discrimination and corruption as a ghost. While there isn't much he could do about it, we never get a glimpse on his thoughts on it. We barely get Deku's thoughts about this for that matter. Deku tried becoming the greatest hero, but he never has a plan nor signs he even plans to make a plan about it. Sure, they can't focus on everything all the time, and with Deku you can at the very least argue that he already experienced discrimination himself, that All Might already helped him understand that you can't always save everyone, that AFO and Tomura were way more immediate threats for him and that he was just a child. While I still think Deku should've thought more about the system, I can at least understand why he wouldn't give it much of a thought at the time of dealing with AFO. I can't say the same thing about Yoichi, who as an adult he was convinced villains always lose. I can also understand him dealing exclusively with AFO and Tomura at the moment, much like Izuku, but what I cannot understand is him never worrying while he was alive about people with quirks being harmed by society, even if his brother wasn't around. There was admittedly not much Yoichi could've done about systemic issues, but I have to wonder how he still kept his belief that villains always lose at the end. Did he believe that every single bigot out of thousands will lose? Furthermore, even if he would've managed to bring his brother to the good side, was he ever going to address systematic issues? This was never confirmed. Also, given Yoichi's empathetic nature, you would expect him to try help Izuku recover as much as possible from his trauma, this includes the discrimination and corruption he saw. While he brings hope, it's mostly just: "Things can get better, don't give up.". While on paper this sounds nice, humans have an instinctual fear of the unknown. As long as you don't know how how a terrible situation could stop, you will still feel a lot of fear. Yoichi and the other OFA users never try to come up with concrete solutions for systematic problems. They never give Deku advice how he and other people could influence society for the better. Sure, they are there for Deku, but their own plans are often faulty. Sure, they compliment him and tell him to keep faith, but they never teach him how to rely on external forces. They never consider he might need someone to talk to about societal issues.
This is the part I want to address the most and it is Yoichi offering vague information. The first time he ever talked to Deku, he didn't even introduce himself, which is universally the first rule when meeting someone and it only takes a few seconds. Keep in mind that Yoichi wanted to befriend Deku and it wasn't urgent for Deku to know about Yoichi's and AFO's past. It's not like Yoichi had much to say anyway, he just gave vague examples of people making deals with AFO, mentioned his brother toying and disposing of people, Yoichi himself getting imprisoned and AFO's group killing another one due to their own initiative. Yoichi not mentioning their birht cirrsumstance is one thing, maybe he wanted Deku to only see AFO's villainy at the moment, maybe he didn't think Deku would believe it or some other reason. My question is, why didn't he mention his brother always killing people? It's more realistic than AFO and Yoichi surviving as babies. Why didn't he start off by showing child AFO killing people? Really, something like "A villain killed people since he was a child." would much more effectively help Deku understand how horrible AFO is, than just Yoichi's vague description. Yoichi went right into his backstory without even telling Deku his own name, yet he didn't mention his brother murdering people since childhood? I think Horikoshi didn't originally plan for AFO to be a murderer since childhood and that he largely retconned their original backstory.
I want to add a few more things to Yoichi passing down his quirk. I mentioned him having dumb luck. This point by itself isn't that much against him. One thing I didn't mention is that I do not think it was pragmatic for him to yell at his brother in front of his face. Sure, Yoichi was right that AFO should've stopped, but yelling and bashing rarely work and he should've expected his brother punishing him for it. As mentioned, his reaction was understandable and I am sure he had no way of knowing better, so while I am criticizing his action, I don't really hold it against him. That being said, him being able to transfer his quirk was still dumb luck. I don't hold it against him, dumb luck is a thing in real life too, but the narrative presents this as being a very heroic act from his side, when in reality he only did it at the spur of the moment while he was the one being saved. Maybe he tried consciously or subconsciously to help Kudo with that, but it doesn't seem like he knew how his quirk works at the moment. Furthermore, he only obtained his transfer quirk by dumb luck, so even if he was actively trying to help Kudo by transferring his quirk, it still was only possible due to dumb luck. Granted, he helped the users not get the OFA stolen by AFO, I'll give him that, but other than that his contributions leave much to be desired for the reasons mentioned above. Yoichi's greatest achievements are passing down OFA, which was only possible due to dumb luck, and not allowing AFO and Tomura to take OFA, until he agreed to let Tomura take it for a convoluted plan to redeem him.
Lastly, I will address the reasons for Yoichi's flaws. I understand he didn't get much of an education, I understand he lived during different times and I understand flawed characters aren't necessarily badly written. I don't want flawless characters, I hate Mary Sues and Marty Stus just as much as the average person (outside of parodies). My issue with Yoichi isn't that his philosophy is flawed, it's that his philosophy does more harm than good (it would in real life anyway) while simultaneously never showing signs of improvement or getting any criticism. One of the story themes might be generations passing down to the next one, but the new generation barely did any improvements if any at all.
